


the gray string of something or other

by siderealOtaku



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, M/M, Post Revelations route, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate Colorblindness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 12:16:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12320916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siderealOtaku/pseuds/siderealOtaku
Summary: It wasn't first sight - it was first understanding. (Or, Xander learns to see red, and this is a good thing.)





	the gray string of something or other

_Have you ever wondered – well, I have_  
_About how when I say, say – red, for example –_  
_There’s no way of knowing if red_  
_Means the same thing in your head_  
_as red means in my head when someone says red_

-“Quiet,” _Matilda: The Musical_

 

_smoke_

Hoshido was grayer than he expected. 

A riot of colors, the old books said, the ones he’d read before Father set that whole section of the library ablaze…

_**the gray flames, crawling and consuming, that sick oily yellowish-gray, slick and devouring, consuming every trace of Hoshido in Nohr, and he’d buried his head in his younger sister’s skirts and cried. Cried about the gray-yellow-black demons and she didn’t understand until tiny Leo, already scholarly, pointed out that he must not be able to see…** _

“It’s all red, isn’t it?” he asks his retainers, looking around at the gray-bricked streets, the charcoal-bridled pegasi, the silver-white headdresses of the Flame Tribe delegation. 

“Yes, milord,” Laslow says, something that’s almost pity in his eyes, and the King of Nohr turns away. 

_So you’re going to be king over a gray world, too, Ryoma,_ he thinks, remembering the gray skies and walls of his own country. Those are really gray, Laslow had assured him, Laslow who sees one painfully brilliant color for every friend he left behind. 

Only surely the King of Hoshido can see red, if he’s filled his country with so much of it. 

_steel_

“Your brother’s hair, did it come from your father?” he asks the first princess of Hoshido, then internally curses himself for the stumbling attempt at conversation. Sumeragi’s likeness hangs in the palace ten times over. There’s no question where his heir’s tumble of wild brown locks had originated.

Hinoka laughs it off. “He looks more like Father every day,” she affirms. “There aren’t many portraits of…of our birth mom, but Dad always said she had…oh….sorry,” She runs a hand through her short-cropped locks, and the king of Nohr realizes they probably aren’t truly the color of a freshly polished blade. 

“It’s pretty, even through these eyes,” he tells her, gallantly. “It matches your naginata.” 

She’s probably blushing. He can’t tell. 

Finally: “Mine was red, too,” she says. “And Subaki’s as well…we, we laughed so hard when we clapped eyes on each other and finally saw it. Red-blind redheads.” 

“What does it looks like?” he asks her, figuring the blunt warrior will give him something different than Laslow’s poetic attempts or Leo’s dictionary definitions. 

“It’s….” He recognizes the pause as someone trying futilely to describe the color without referring back to some object or reference point he can’t hope to understand. 

“It makes me happy,” she finally says, almost shy. “Like yellow, but better.” 

“Thank you,” he says. Hinoka’s words _had_ been helpful. As helpful as Laslow’s poetry, in their own strange way. 

He thinks the conversation will end there. It doesn’t. 

“Hey, do me a favor,” she practically demands. “If you meet…if you get your color while we’re here, tell my brother his shiny red armor looks silly. It’s the first thing _I_ did. He turned…er…steam was practically pouring out of his ears, he was so mad!” 

The king can’t find it in himself to do anything other than chuckle and nod his assent. If the sound of his laughter surprises her, she doesn’t let it show. 

_silver_

Saizo, the ninja with the moonlit hair, brings news of danger. Mokushu loyalists, creeping towards the capital with the long-dead Kotaro’s name on their lips.

Corrin’s judgment is as swift and decisive as her blade. A small team, half Hoshidan and half Nohrian. A swift retaliation. A wordless declaration that the alliance is both firm and unmerciful.

He volunteers. It is his duty as a king. (And they mean to strike at night, when his lack of red is less of a hindrance than at other times.) Peri pouts, Laslow looks concerned, but the Nohrian king does not back down – especially when he hears that his Hoshidan counterpart has offered his services as well. 

They set out at midnight. To his surprise, Ryoma takes point. The samurai king’s directions are sure, precise, unwavering. Their group passes through the heavy woods as silently as the invisible soldiers who had once been their foes. 

“You know this area well?” It is as awkward a conversation starter as the one he had used with the first princess. 

“No,” the wild-haired king says, too quickly. The silence resumes for a moment, two, three, and then:

“Black.”

He doesn’t ask Ryoma what he means. He doesn’t need to. 

The Hoshidan continues anyway: “Sakura says it’s...relaxing. Like peace and quiet for your eyes. Mother…Queen Mikoto always included a line in her prayers to the gods, about how she hoped my sou…my color would bring me peace someday.” 

The atmosphere between them shifts: newly intimate, the reopening of wounds long crusted over with smoke-hued blood, only to find flesh knitted and beginning to heal. 

He locks eyes with the King of Hoshido and bares his own wounds. “Red. Fa…King Garon hoped I’d never find it. Thought I’d make a better killer, if I never learned what blood really looks like.” 

A twig snaps somewhere in the darkness. Ryoma points at something that looks to the King of Nohr like nothing more than a smudged patch of undergrowth, heavy with shadow. Corrin raises her hand in response: the signal for attack. 

In the last drawn breaths before battle begins, he dares a few words further: 

“You could…tell me about the flowers in the castle gardens, someday, and I could tell you about the stars….if you like.” 

Ryoma’s answering smile gleams as bright as Raijinto’s moonlit blade. 

_rose_

After the victory feast, Elise pulls him by both hands into the garden, shouting something about a surprise. 

He follows her pointing finger and stares into the night sky, briefly wondering if this isn’t some elaborate prank masterminded by Niles or Takumi. Then there is a _crack,_ and the firmament explodes with emerald-green sparks. 

“They are called fireworks.” Somehow, he isn’t surprised to find that Ryoma has come to stand beside him. “They’re a clever creation of Yukimura’s. This show was Sakura’s idea. She planned it specifically for y…for our honored guests.” 

Two further _cracks_ produce starbursts of indigo and sunflower-yellow. He sees in the flash of light from the second firework that Ryoma is staring off to the left, unable to pick out the fireworks in what he sees as only a field of featureless white. 

Without thinking, Xander places a hand on his fellow king’s shoulder, pulling his gaze away from the sky. “That one was yellow, almost exactly the shade of Leo and Elise’s hair.” Another _crack,_ and he continues. “Purple – the decorations on Nohrian dress armor.” 

Ryoma smiles that blade-bright smile again, and Elise catches on to what her brother is doing and describes the next one. Camilla takes over for her when another yellow one appears, Takumi grudgingly picks up the narrative at green. 

Something glitters in Ryoma’s eyes, something that might be tears, and Xander’s heart feels warmed by something brighter and stronger than the sickly gray flames of his memory. 

It’s only when the last of the smoke has cleared after the final explosion that the King of Nohr realizes he had seen every firework clearly. Not a single one had been red. 

He bows and kisses Sakura’s hand as he thanks her for the generous gif of such a beautiful show. 

“She’s blushing,” Ryoma tells him. “It’s cute.” 

“I’m sure it is,” he affirms, finally, reluctantly, removing his hand from his fellow king’s shoulder. 

_rouge_

“The scholars were fond of sorting the stars into shapes,” he tells Ryoma in the garden, on the last night before he is to return to Nohr. “My mother knew them all by heart. I was never good at finding them, but I remember all the names just as she taught me. There’s the Shuriken, the Ocean Waves, the Dragons – Dawn and Dusk, of course.” 

“So even when we fought down here, Hoshido and Nohr were side by side in the sky,” the samurai marvels. 

Xander nods, finding himself suddenly unable to speak. A lump of emotion rises in his throat, solid as a pearl. 

“As they were meant to be?” The usually confident King of Hoshido allows it to become a question. 

The King of Nohr finds his voice. “Yes,” he whispers. 

Ryoma smiles again, that same brilliant, unguarded grin which Xander never tires of seeing, and suddenly everything is different. 

Ryoma’s magnificent armor, the kingly mask that girds his face in lieu of any crown, the lush flowerbed at his feet, flood with a sudden and nearly unbearable intensity. 

…All just as they were moments ago, but now somehow… _more._

Xander looks down. The cobblestones beneath his feet, the wrought-iron bench a few feet away from him, the swords at his and his fellow king’s hip, all are as solidly gray as ever they have been. 

But Ryoma’s armor isn’t gray any longer. 

It’s… 

He places one gloved hand on the Hoshidan king’s cheek, tilts his face upwards, directing the other man’s gaze towards the sky, hoping, _hoping_ …

“You’re right,” Ryoma tells him. “I don’t see any dragons at all.” 

“While we’re admitting things, your sister was also correct about something.” 

“That my armor looks silly?” the samurai king asks ruefully. 

Xander shakes his head. “That red makes me feel happy.” 

Now Ryoma’s hand is on his cheek, too, and the Hoshidan king’s eyes flutter shut as their lips meet. Xander feels the tension flow out of his soulmate’s shoulders as he relaxes into the peace of newfound darkness. 

They kiss for a long, long time, there between the star-studded black sky and the beds of riotous crimson flowers. When they break apart, Xander can see the blush standing out on Ryoma’s cheeks – perfectly, beautifully, stunningly _red._

**Author's Note:**

> I've been in Lobster Heaven for a year and a half and never actually got around to writing any proper fanfic about him, so I fixed that. Soulmate AU cause it's my favorite kind. Thanks for reading!


End file.
